Sunday, 25 January 2015

Knocked over another Twilight force pack from the kickstarter, been feeling very motivated to paint lately. This time it was NuraSen Gohral, his four KalDreman bodyguard, and NuraKira Obal. In keeping with my ideas about the Delgon colour coding its priests and soldiers by both rank/experience and role I've expanded on my colour markings.

First up is NuraKira Obal. As a NuraKira she has had all of the copper coloured parts of her priestly garb upgraded to silver. I've decided that as one of the priests sent out to spread the word of the Enarii through out the Empire she has green trim on her sleeve and belt. In recognition of her greater experience in this role they are darker (the darker the colour the more rank/experience in the current role).

We move on now to NuraSen Gohral an elder priest and one of the key players in the orchestration of the Retribution. His priestly trappings are all in gold and the belt and trim of his sleeves are both in the purple of such a lofty member of the priesthood.

As befits a priest of his rank Gohral is accompanied by a full complement of four bodyguards. The KalDreman are brave Dhogu (a race of Fubarnii from the Setir Mountains) pledged to the Delgon by their Kimut (warlord). Again in line with Delgon practice they wear the purple of the priest they are assigned to protect, but still retain the fur leggings of their northern homelands. Named for their distinct weaponry the are fearsome in battle and will willing lay their lives down for their charge.

NuraSen Gohral listens to the report from his favourite NuraKirawhile his KalDreman bodyguards scans the surrounds for danger

I'm not sure where I'm going from here to be honest. I'm thinking it's time for some empire. I'm thinking I'll kick it off with the Hunters and Slingers and more than likely the Traders Caravan. Also on the slate for this month is Combined Army force for Infinity which The Youngest, myself and a mate have decided to get into this year. I will be expanding the Pan-O and Nomads from the starter box to round out to the suggested 300 points, but Combined Army just appealed to me more. I'm also intending to get some terrain sorted out for both Twilight and Across the Dead Earth through February as well.

Saturday, 24 January 2015

With the painting challenge spurring me on to get things done I've got two stater forces painted up for Anyaral: World of Twilight. So the only thing left to do was to have a game. The Youngest and I were home alone on Tuesday so we cleared the table and set up a small 3' x 3' area to have a crack. I'll be honest we made a few rather stupid mistakes with the rules the first time (Some how I missed entire lines of text) but we've got it down now and I'm expanding the Delgons so we can have a larger game sometime soon.

With what I currently have painted the selection is a rather limited 75 points (one NuraLehn and six KalGarkii) so the Devanu side is very much handicapped when it comes to model count (one Jenta Handler and one Grishak) so I came up with a basic scenario using the story behind my Delgon colour scheme as the basic plot point.

The scenario is still a WIP but currently plays as follows:

Scenario: The scenario is based around a green Delgon scout squad having finished a mission to observe a small Empire village (off board). They have been spotted by a Devanu Handler who's pack doesn't appreciate the increased presence of Delgon in their territory and are making a series of quick bloody opportunistic attacks as they present themselves.

Deployment: The Delgon deploy up to six inches from the edge of the table on the roadway or a central point. The Devanu may secretly deploy in ambush in the three major terrain pieces. They do not have to be in the same terrain piece though the spot they are hiding should be noted.

Special Rule: The Grishak is getting excited and as part of setup the Devanu player roles a d6 and adds his Beast Handler value of two to the roll. The result is when the Grishak will break ambush and charge the nearest Delgon (for example if the result is three on the third Devanu initiative counter the Grishak must be activated and moved toward the Delgon). Up until this point the Devanu player is free to choose to either pass or play his stones.

Delgon Force: One NuraLehn (15) and Six KalGarkii (60)
Devanu Force: One Jenta Handler (50) and One Grishak (25)
{I'm considering adding some sort of re-enforcement Grishak for the Devanu player if a model goes down early but I'll need to play a few more times to work out timing and if it's really necessary}

Delgon Objective: You need to get the report back to camp, the Order of Relan have arrived to assist the Militia. Major Victory if the NuraLehn and at least two KalGarkii make it off the opposite edge of the table. Minor Victory if the NuraLehn or a minimum of two KalGarkii make if across.
Devanu Objective: It's all speed hit them hard, kill what you can, but don't chase and don't get bogged down. Major Victory if you can make five kills, Minor victory for three.

The Games:

Game One (At this stage the scenario was just get the NuraLehn over the edge) The Youngest as Delgon, myself as Devanu.

The games started with The Youngest deploying her Delgon in a mass (she was trying to keep the NuraLehn protected, which of course was horrible for Authority activations as we discovered). I've rolled a massive one for my Grishak roll but I'm more in this game to get a feel for the rules so I assign both my models further back on the table to give her a chance to react.

Naturally after drawing the first four initiative counters three of them are mine and the Grishak appears and starts heading down the hill toward the Delgon party

The next stone is the first combat counter for the phase which passes uneventful and of course the following two are mine which has brought the Grishak in line with the hiding Handler so I reveal him and continue the charge.

The next one was the second combat counter again unused bringing the turn to it's end. The first stone of the new turn was mine so I bought the Grishak in for a charge attack and pulled down the first Delgon casualty for the day with it's slashing beak. Followed by another unused combat counter.

The next couple were The Youngest's so she quickly bought up some KalGarkii to present a defensive line, which I then ran my Handler into so we could see a combat phase play out.

We pretty much went through every stone left to draw before the last combat counter was drawn which made for a very busy and savage melee but a good selection and rolling of combat stones saw The Youngest take down the Devanu and only loose two Fubarnii to the attacks.

The following round saw her get initiative then a combat counter in which the remaining two KalGarkii in the melee took down the Grishak at the cost of one of their own and gave The Youngest a victory.

The second game we swapped faction and had pretty much the same result hence the tweaking of the scenario with some different victory conditions, which made for a much tighter game later on that night when The Wife (Delgon) challenged The Eldest (Devanu) and took out a minor victory for herself. I won't go too in depth for the second game, but here's a highlight reel so to speak.

The Handler makes her move

But the Delgon mission must go on

The Grishak appears

The Devanu is taken down more by luck than skill

It could be all over here for the Delgon

But numbers prevail on the day

Really nice easy to pick up rule set, great back story and fantastic miniatures what more could you want out of a game. I don't think I mention it either but all three games were played out between half an hour to an hour each so really great if your limited for time on a day when you want to fit something in.

Friday, 23 January 2015

So managed to get another starter force painted for January, and I'm hoping I may get a third one done before the months out. This time it was for the Delgon. The Delgon are a closed off now theocratic society of Fubarnii living in a harsher northern part of the continent. Unlike their southern cousins they never laboured as slaves under the Devanu but as the old empire crumbled some where driven north and caused a fair amount of havoc. After centuries of resisting all offers to join the Fubarnii empire both diplomatic and militaristic their gods the Enarii have come among them with a message of a single empire under them and the Delgon have been gearing up for war.

Delgon young are taken from their parents and raised in creches and here it is decided what role they shall fulfill beginning as young jenta and for the rest of their lives.

A small force this time consisting of a NuraLehn leading six KalGarkii. The NuraLehn is a young acolyte in the priesthood who often lead form the front lines often serving to run messages or lead small units of troops. KalGarkii are the rank and file of the Great Retribution, what they lack in training they make up for with numbers and unquestioning loyalty to their priesthood leaders.

I'll start off with the KalGarkii soldiers. I've gone for an grey skin tone in line with the description in the rule book. The amour I decided would be a duller steel in my thinking lending more weight to a feel of a recent increase in production with more time spent crafting the material and less time spent on the buffing and finishing of the finished piece. With their weapons I've gone for a brighter more honed steel on the head with a copper haft. Seeing as fubarnii live underground as much as over and the Delgon use of various steam powered mechanical devices and experimental weapons developed through use of engineers I've gone for metal hafts. While copper in colour they are most likely some form of alloy or metal unknown here on Earth. I'm also intending to use this as part of an over-lining theme across my Delgon soldiers, along with the black grey pants and the splashes of red signifying the Retribution. The sleeves are what I am using to signify the units position and role with in the Delgon army structure with the blue signifying a forward observation/scouting role and the paleness meaning they are a newly formed unit used for run of the mill missions (i.e. scouting the countryside en-route to targeted villages or cities) or expendable combat roles.

The NuraLehn leader is actually the model I painted first from this group, I figured the single colour robe would be a good place to start while I was getting a feel for what I wanted to do with these guys in a thematic sense. While painting the robe the hood stood out to me as a way to both show rank in the priesthood and the devotion to the Enarii mission of Retribution and hence the red to signifying the blood that must be spilled in order to bring the land together in peace and order under their holy word. The copper discs around the hood show a low rank among the priesthood and will of course be exchanged as the priest rises up through the ranks. It then came to the sash and low flowing sleeves to give a feeling of belonging to the unit.

My choice of basing has highlighted my lack of tundra or winter
terrain which I'm going to have to remedy

The day I got these guys finished The Youngest and I set up a 3' x 3' table and I knocked up a quick scenario involving the Delgon scouting the road to a nearby Empire village and getting ambushed by a Devanu beast handler and a loyal Grishak. We made a few mistakes with the rules, but by the end of the second game I had them sorted out in my head and we'd both enjoyed them swapping sides are the first one to get a feel for both factions. The Wife and The Eldest had a game that night that they both enjoyed it as well. My only problem was with only seventy-five points of Delgon an unlucky dice roll quickly meant a defeat for the Devanu so the solution was to get some more painted. As I stated in my previous post I've got a couple of higher ranked priests and their bodyguard primed now and the plan is to get them under the brush and finished off in the next few days.

Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Managed to get quite a bit done this week. Finished off the Kings of War Golems and therefore made the first step towards finishing my Abyssal Dwarf force for said game (well the first few boxes anyway, until the Kickstarter turns up). I had my first crack at lava basing and I think it's turned out pretty well. I also finished off the Delgon NuraLehn and KalGarkii troopers for the Anaryal : World of Twlight game and painting contest.

Of course having two painted factions meant a game had to be played so The Youngest and I had a couple of seventy-five point games with a quick scenario I cooked up to come to grips with the rules. The Wife just finished playing The Eldest before and after three games I'm fairly certain I've got them down and I have to say it's a really nice little skirmish game. I've got a battle rep coming for The Youngest and my games. Of course the limited points made things very much unforgiving for the Devanu player so the only thing to do was to prime some more Delgon to get the value's up. So I've got NuraSen (technically the character Gohral, but I doubt he'll hit the scenario), a NuraKira (again another character Obal but we'll see) and four KalDreman (elite bodyguards pledged to serve the Delgon by Dhogu warlords). This should bring things up to 220ish points and make things alot more balanced.

So onto the pretty pictures

Golems prior to basing

Front view

I'm really happy with the lava effect. I've basically built upwards from a dark red through to the brighter yellow just with progressive colour changes and thinner coats as I went upward. I've then had a play with some realistic water which is my new favourite toy and added a couple of coats which has given it a nice sheen and a bit more depth in my opinion. I have a feeling lava is going to feature heavily throughout the army as I get them painted up. The photo comes up ok but they are brilliant in the flesh.... so to speak.

Rear view

As with the Devanu a couple of posts ago I'll just leave you with the one picture as I'll go more in depth again with the why's and have more photos to show in the competition post. I don't have any terrain to match the bases so I've just done them on the plain white backdrop.

NuraLehn and KalGarkii

I'll leave things there tonight and hopefully get the AARs (Single post though) and another competition post to link in the forums up in the next day or two depending on how tied up I get with work.... oh alright I'll give you an "action" shot from one of the games.

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

While it appears that the picture posting issue on the forums has been fixed, I figured I'd save space and do a quick blog post to link for my entry.

I had seen a couple of the models my Uncle had bought a few year ago, but the kickstarter was my first real look at the miniatures proper and the world. I like it. After reading the rule book I have to say I'm impressed with the scope of the world developed for this game and can't wait to really get cracking on enacting my own adventures throughout the lands.

Ok to business. I'm aiming to get a couple of different things painted up each month depending on how distracted I get by other piles of metal and plastic around the place, but I'm determined to get at least one force painted up each month.

I've started with the Devanu Outcasts to begin with, not for any real reason to be honest, it came down to they were the first bag I grabbed when trying to work out what to start with :). I read the rule book first to get the appropriate grounding from the fluff and this is what I've come up with.

Better focus on the
sempa, forgive the wet
PVA on the base best photo
I have of them

Focus mainly on the Kopa showing the
larger amount of bone highlight across
the face

I started with the Grishaks. The outcast pack came with one Kopa and two Sempa. The Kopa being the elder and would naturally be the alpha of the pack if not for the Devanu in control with the sempa being mature animals themselves. To me these models just cried out to be green so that's what I did, with a darker heavier green around the head to show off the harder denser skin around the head to protect them from counter attacks. To show the further growth and dominance of the kopa over the sempa I've added more Ivory highlights mostly along head as well as a few touches along his back and legs just to show the added weight and protection that being an elder has bestowed.

Spear Thrower and the second of the pack

The Handler wearing scavenged Grishak
hides taken from his charges

The second day saw the Devanu themselves hit the painting table. Once more I felt these were just screaming a colour they wanted, this time orange. I took the Devanu to be a savage race prone to overt displays of strength and confidence and figured that naturally evolution would have steered them towards a bright yet aggressive colour. Again I chose to show a noticeable physical change through the different ages/pack levels, this time having their skin become more vibrant with their markings becoming dark and blacker as they age or gain dominance over the pack. While the Outcasts have no Kopas or Sempas, I have darkened the skin tone of the pack alpha and shown the spear thrower and beast master to be the least dominate of the pack by keeping their colours dull.

The "Alpha" of the outcasts

Focus is on the stone work here

The final figure was the Kosok, a winged predatory beast large enough to harass a fubarnii. With this model I decided to have a bit of fun and went for a brighter almost clashing colour scheme. The thinking behind this was it was dangerous enough that it didn't need to camouflage itself overly and would also serve as a warning to challengers that perhaps this was a creature you don't want to mess with. While painting I played around with the stones at the base of the tree a bit and I have to say I love the final effect. I've modified what I did on these stones a little and I'm currently painting some Lesser Obsidian Golems for Kings of War using the same colours with a dark wash step to deepen the base colour and provide a clearer contrast to the highlight.

The Kosok soars above the handler
waiting for his signals

The finished Devanu Outcasts

I've got the Delgon Kalgarkii soldiers and thier Nurakira Acolyte leader primed now and hopefully I'll have them painted up before the end of January.

Monday, 12 January 2015

I've been incredibly busy the last week and a bit with a whole slew of things hobby wise. Painting, kit building, board games and a couple of quick skirmish games against The Wife. And all this pinned around work, running The Wife around in her car (mine's out getting hail damage repaired) and having The Daughters home on holidays.

First off gave those dusty looking Nomads another spray with the varnish and they've come up beautifully, not a hint of the frostiness from before. Forgive the blurry photo but didn't bother taking a better one seeing as I'd already put a post up for these guys.

My first painting project for the year was getting my Devanu Outcasts painted from the Anaryal: World of Twilight kickstarter. A few reasons for this. Number one the models are brilliantly cast and I wanted to see how well they'd turn out painted. Two I'd promised The Wife I'd get them on the go as she was right behind me with this one both of us coming to the other about going all in for this one. And three there is currently a painting competition that he's running for the next three months offering Twilight Points to be used as webstore credit as a prize and I really want to get more, the thirteen or so baggies I've currently got not being enough after seeing some of the stuff that is being worked on at the moment. I won't go into too much detail as I'll be putting up another post for these on their own to link into the forums as my entry. But here's a picture of the first lot I've completed. I got right into these and had them done in about three days, essential I broke it down into one type of creature per day.

I've now got the Delgon Kalgarkii soldiers out on the back deck with the primer coat drying. These will be a little more subdued colour wise being a militaristic theocracy faction of grey skinned Fubarnii the smaller race that currently dominates the world, having rebelled and overthrown the older Devanu empire. The Delgon were never enslaved buy the Devanu but still have been subject to their raids at times

A couple of months or so back, The Daughter's and I had a game set in the old west and they loved it. So a quick word to my mother and there's a couple of Deadman's Hand gang boxes for them for Christmas, Renegade Indians for The Youngest and Banditos for the Eldest. Not to be left behind I picked up a 7th Cavalry box for The Wife, The Pinkertons for myself, the Outlaws for Toby and a bundle deal from War and Peace Games for the 4 ground Wild West themed building kits (The bundle I grabbed is gone by the looks {Everything!!} but there are still a couple of different ones there). I've put together the back street buildings, the gallows and the sheriff's office just by knocking them over one at a time after work.

Pinkerton's visit the local sherrif

Once I'd finished up with the Anaryal figures I also got my gang painted up and finished. After the likes of the Anaryal and Corvus Belli Infinity metals I've been painting I have to be honest I did not find these as enjoyable to paint but I'm still happy with the way they'be finished up. I've also now got The Wife's 7th Calvary drying so we can try to get a game in within the next couple of weeks.